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He nodded, taking two steps away before coming back to kiss me soundly. “Be so careful,” he whispered.
The reflection of worry on his face and the crease in his brow conjured the same feelings in me. I’d never been able to figure out the Maestro ahead of time before, but I wasn’t sure I could worry about that. Not with the king present, his men close by, and Quill on full display.
“Deyanira,” Hollis said as I tugged him through the performers packing the sides of the stage when the music began. “Perhaps we should stay away from the stage until it’s time for you to go out.”
“Why would we?—”
My words were clipped short by the reflection of a sequin bouncing across his face. I whipped around, expecting the stage to hold Orin and his cello, only to find him dancing with four completely naked women, save the glittering high heels. He slung a hand out to the side, taking the waist of one woman while he spun another, and the crowd was eating it up. His movements were slow. As slow as they had been with me. Jealousy raged through me like a storm before I was even prepared for the emotion.
His eyes. They would betray his conviction, I was sure of it. For whatever he might’ve been forced by his uncle to do, I’d know and feel the truth there. I’d only needed him to spin my way. But he held his back to me, falling to his knees before one of the women, grabbing her thigh as she flung a bare leg onto his shoulder. He could have tasted her. Right there in front of the entire crowd. My stomach turned. My whole body became numb.
“Little Dove,” Hollis said.
But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t move at all when I watched the woman dance away, and he crawled across the floor on his knees for her.
Look at me, I pleaded. Look at me, godsdamnit.
I needed to see it in his eyes. The repulsion. The anger.
Another woman danced forward, using a giant handheld fan of feathers to block her naked body as she twirled around him, chin low, eyes seductive as fingers trailed across his heaving chest. His head fell, and the performer flashed a wicked smile, lifting his chin and shaking a finger at him.
The crowd turned feral, laughing and clapping with the rapid tempo of the music.
I knew it wasn’t his fault. I knew this show was meant to rattle me, break me, but still, I couldn’t help the envy that seeped through my mind like wildfire. Orin was not mine. As much as the bands on our wrists linked us, and though he’d kissed me until the world became obsolete, neither of us had earned the right to lay claim over the other.
A hand slipped into mine, though I barely registered the way it felt, and I wasn’t sure who it was. Then another hand. Soft and gentle. Thea and Paesha. My friends. Truly the greatest women I’d ever known.
Family.
The crowd knew, of course. Who he was. Who we were together. They’d come to see the Death Maiden, and now they watched her bonded husband fawn over other women because I was not and would never be truly worthy of a man’s loyalty. That was what they would say. The story the Maestro spun to eviscerate me before I’d ever take the stage.
“It’s not real,” Thea said into my ear before her hand fell free of mine and she slipped away.
I nodded. I was far more than this envy. More than arbitrary control in a battle of wits. I didn’t need to see his face to know this wasn’t what Orin wanted. I needed to learn to trust. To let go of my father’s voice in my ear reminding me that I was and would always be alone.
They’d removed his jacket as he danced, and I wondered how far they would go. Would they take him down to his bare skin? Would I be able to stand on the side of the stage and watch it happen? Just as my nerves vibrated, locking down my muscles, coiling deeper and deeper within me, until I didn’t think I could bear to watch a single second more, his gaze finally lifted to mine.
A broken man stared into my soul, so distant from the acts performed on stage, my feet shuffled forward. The woman at my side anchored me.
“If you step on stage, you might start your timer. Or break the deal,” Paesha hissed, still as stone beside me.
She was right, of course. Still, that glorious golden band, inches below the blue, throbbed on my wrist.
I am with you.
He couldn’t hear me or read my mind. But the unspoken words lingered, just as he grabbed one of the women, twisted her away, and kissed her, half a second before the lights fell.
With the roar of the crowd, the stage was cleared, and each of the performers, including my husband, was ushered off the opposite side. I didn’t have time to process anything that’d happened before a drum roll sounded and the hourglass was wheeled onto the stage. Every light in the theater burst to life, just as the final stagehand made fearful eye contact with me and turned the hourglass.
The crowd fell deathly silent. My breaths, short. I’d forgotten everything about my performance, so caught in my own damn jealousy. A small push from Paesha and I was thrust onto an empty stage in the middle of a silent theater, with no instruction and now less than ten minutes to win the freedom of almost everyone in the world who mattered to me.
I looked back once, but she was already gone. Everyone was. Not a single friendly face greeted me, and you could have heard a pin drop in that theater. Something prickled beneath my skin. Something screaming at me to focus, to think, to do something other than stand here like a fool.
Under the glaring lights that left no shadow for comfort, I stood alone, facing a sea of impassive faces, the lack of amusement a palpable force. There was no grand display, no one to share the stage with. Just me, the audience, and the ticking of time.
My only saving grace was Quill.
Quill.
